30 December, 2011

I thought I'd get one last post in before 2012 arrives. This post covers my28mm Sea Devil force for my Doctor Who project. Despite appearing in only two stories over the years, 1972's The Sea Devils and 1984's Warriors of the Deep, the Sea Devils are one of my favorite monsters from Doctor Who. They are a race of sentient aquatic reptiles that went into hibernation in the prehistoric era to avoid a catastrophe caused by the Moon being captured by Earth's gravitational pull. Their 'alarm clock' failed to go off and their scattered colonies are still in hibernation. Their land-dwelling cousins are the Silurians, who have appeared in 1970's The Silurians, 1984's Warriors of the Deep and 2010's The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood.

My Sea Devil force consists of 26 miniatures, plus 1 allied Silurian. I bought about 2/3rds of them directly from Black Tree Designs and the rest on eBay. Three of them are from the old FASA line of Doctor Who miniatures. For these photos I divided them into 5 squads of 5, plus 2 leaders. I painted them at various times in 2010 and 2011.

I painted them in a color scheme similar to their appearance on the show with one difference; the clothing of the unarmored Sea Devils had a turquoise color on tv that I've never cared for. I substituted a metallic blue that was from a very old bottle of GW paint. I think it looks good with the skin color and is suitably aquatic. I painted their weapons with Ral Partha/Iron Wind Copper, and the skin is a base of GW Terracotta highlighted with Howard Hues Middle East Flesh. The armored Sea Devils are painted in P3 Black with a drybrush of Ceramcoat Charcoal Grey. The bases are painted with one of the Ceramcoat tans, I forget which one. When I initially based them I used sand from the beach at Charleston, SC. However the grains looked too big to me, so I substituted Woodland Scenics ballast. They were sealed with 2 coats of Krylon Matte Finish.

They are based on slottabases with metal washers underneath to provide balance and for use in my magnetic storage system.

You can click on the photos for close-ups.

First is the Sea Devil leader (l) and an allied Silurian (r). I painted the details of his armor gold in order to distinguish him from the others.

The first squad consists of armored Sea Devils, "Elite Group Two" for those of you who are Doctor Who fans.

The second squad of five:

The third squad of five:

The fourth squad of five:

The fifth squad of five. This one has an extra leader figure, with armor details painted in metallic blue to match the rest:

And just to show that I haven't just been shuffling around the same miniatures, here is a photo of the entire force together.